My son turned 18 two days ago, and I've been walking around in a bit of a surreal state ever since, which is kind've baffling to me. I mean, I knew this day was coming. Things crept deliberately and consistently towards it, like they always do. Life happened, as it always does, and here we are... he is now 18, and I am now 53. It all makes sense because it happened the way it's supposed to happen. But I'm baffled nonetheless. The boy grew up. It wasn't an instantaneous process. So why does it feel like it was? Why does it feel like it was just last week that I was cuddling his 4 year old self, cozy in his bed, reading a story to cap off the day? I blame my memory. It's playing tricks on me.
Lately, my memory won't quit. Thoughts, images and feelings have been weaving themselves through me, at random hours of the day and night. A few nights ago, I got up at 3am for a routine trip to the bathroom, crawled back into bed and thought I'd just drift off to sleep again as I usually do, but no go. My memory decided to do it's magic, rendering me wide-eyed in the dark. Suddenly, we were both about 10 years younger, my son and I, and I had a full-on memory of a ritual we had back then, one that I now see as a beautiful thing because of its simplicity.
In this particular snapshot, we are both in the living room in our house, on a pull-out sofa. The snow is fiercely blowing outside and we can see its frantic dance through the windows as we look out from our cozy refuge within. The sofa bed is the focal point of the room, and my son and I (and our dog Licorice) are tucked under blankets, propped up on pillows, and having one of our favourite kinds of days: A Stay-At-Home-Day. His 7 or 8 year old hands are holding a DS device, or an xbox controller. I sit beside him, teacup in hand, reading. We are each doing our own thing in this snapshot, but we are doing our own thing together. The feelings this image generates in me are lovely ones- calmness, coziness, contentment- and the act of being together in this space is precious to me.
I created this ritual shortly after we moved into the house, so my son would have been 7 years old then. It was something that happened every few Sundays in the winter months. I'd either decide it would be a stay-at-home day, or he would request one. We would pull out the sofa together, set it up with blankets and pillows and proceed to hang out there together for the afternoon and into the early evening. We ate snacks and dinner there, watched movies there, read, played board games, or sat side by side doing our own thing separately. The activities varied, but they all happened nestled under blankets on the sofa bed. Our homebody selves loved it.
When I asked my son what he wanted to do on his actual birthday (apart from the family celebrations we already had, and the birthday friend outing), his request was simple. He wanted me to order sushi and watch 4 episodes of Game of Thrones with him. I've been watching the series with him for the past few weeks even though my sensitive self doesn't deal well with violence, gore and brutality, partly because he asked me repeatedly to do it and I caved to stop the harassment. But deep down, I know the main reason I'm doing it is to spend time with him, to have him nearby, to be with him in the cozy space of our living room, like we used to do when he was younger. The real reason is because time is doing that train racing thing again lately and I sometimes feel instant surges of panic as I realize my son is one day going to jump on that train and leave my house, likely for good. Although I want him to be able to leave and thrive out there in the world, and will encourage it, part of me also wants to cling and hold him tightly, inhaling the scent of him and not letting go.
So, sitting there together eating sushi and watching the show the other night, my memory jumped back again to our stay-at-home days together when he was a child, and I was filled with intense love and sadness all at once. My eyes lingered for a moment on his almost-fully grown adult self, while my memory played its tricks, morphing him into that precious 7 year old boy. I asked him if he remembered our stay-at-home days and he answered, "Of course". My hope is that one day, his memories of our ritual will fill him with the same sense of peace, contentment and love that fill my heart whenever I look back to that time in our lives. I hope that the coziness, predictability and togetherness of our stay-at-home days will always remain in his adult self, and that he can turn to it in his memory whenever he needs to. I hope too that he never loses his child self as he ventures out into the world independently, as the beautiful young adult that he has become.
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